Rolling Cart Tidy

 Is it my imagination, or does it seem like almost every crafter/sewist/quilter has at least one rolling cart? I had one, and found it so useful, I bought a second one. 

I just bought those green bins at the Dollar Tree, because I saw Pat Sloan has red bins in her cart, and she said she got them at the Dollar Tree. I thought being able to take a bin to the sewing machine, working on a project then putting it back might be handy, or even just swapping bins so I could move my current project to the top compartment. Since one of my sewing cabinets is green, I went with the green bins, they also had white, blue, black, and grey, though not all Dollar Trees have any, never mind that much variety. 

I didn't take a before photo of these carts, but believe me, they were barely organized, and way overloaded! The things you find when you tidy! I had looked all over for my sized patterns for fitted facemasks, and I couldn't find them. No wonder I couldn't find them, they were at the very bottom of an overloaded shelf on one of my rolling carts! Now they are put away with my patterns like they should be. 

Once I unloaded the carts, and I was evaluating what was actually on them, and what shouldn't be on them, I got busy. I found a couple scrap projects I had completely forgotten about. One of those I modified my original plan, and I'm already sewing on it. The other one I'm also sewing on, but instead of going with my original plan, I decided to use those units in two scrap quilts I already started. I have so many projects going, it was kind of nice to just integrate a couple projects together instead of starting another one.

But, of course, there's always another project! As I was cleaning off my carts I realized my 2" (cut) squares had completely gotten out of hand! I knew I had one utensil organizer full of 2" squares, what I didn't realize was how many other containers I also had 2" squares in! I brought all the 2" squares, all the 2.5" squares, and a bunch of misc. pieces upstairs so I could organize them while the appliance repairman was here today. (I finally have a working dishwasher again!!!)

What a mess! Some of my squares were already sorted by color, but I'm going through them again. When only 1.5" shows in the quilt, sometimes there isn't actually enough background showing for it to read as that color, especially when it's a large print. If it doesn't read predominantly as one color, I'm tossing it in a tray, and I'll be making some really scrappy blocks with those. Some of these I have several of the same fabric. Those I'm trying to pair together for 16 patches. A 16 patch made with 2" cut squares only finishes at 6" in a quilt. I was doing a google image search of 16 patch quilts, and I found lots that looked like a great way to use up a bunch of these squares. I'm setting aside any fabrics where I have 8 matching squares. I'm not done sorting, It will likely take several days, this is literally thousands of squares! When I match up fabrics to sew into a block, I'm using Wonder Clips to hold the pieces together. These will be great leader/ender projects. A bunch of my squares were not sorted at all, so those are being sorted for the first time! I find it easiest to use scraps when they are sorted by color. Having a plan for fabric pieces that don't easily fit in one color family is pretty important too. I love the super scrappy riot of color quilts, but most of the people in my family don't. I've found if I stick with a color scheme, more people are apt to like any particular quilt. I make a lot of quilts for donation too, and I like to go with a color scheme when I can. If I am going for a bunch of colors, making individual blocks have a color scheme also helps calm things down. I did find some fun quilt patterns where I can use all the misc. fabrics, and with a solid background it will all come together nicely too. So many options for scraps! 

As I finish organizing these squares, more will get put on my rolling carts, but hopefully now that I've refreshed my mind of what is there, I'll get busy finishing up some things that are ready to assemble. Yesterday I did a lot of counting of units, and figured sashing cutting requirements for a couple projects that are ready to assemble, they were just waiting on me cutting for the next step. Once the math is done, the project goes a lot faster!

These blocks were on my rolling cart too. They are made from bonus HST's from a border I made several years ago. These blocks just finish at 5", so I was debating how to make it a bigger so I could at least get a baby quilt out of them. Rather than set them side by side, I decided to add scrappy black tonal sashing, and purple cornerstones, which will make the small purple diamonds that show up when the blocks are put together, turn into little churndashes instead. I had some black tone on tone 2" strips on my cart too, so I'll just use those for the sashing. If I want to stick with all purple batik cornerstones, I will need to cut some. After looking through my purple squares, I only have about half of the number I need in batiks. It's not a problem, I have what I need in the house, I was just surprised I didn't have enough cut already.